Morphological Trees

Morphological trees
• Morphologically complex words can be

thought as having hierarchical structure
represented by tree diagrams.
• Hierarchical structure is quite evident in
Compound words, and less evident in
derivationally derived lexemes.
Morphological trees
• Compounding (Compound is a complex lexeme
consisting of two or more base lexemes. In the
simplest case, a compound consists of two
lexemes that are joined together (‘’compound
members’’)
• Several types of combinations of different
word-classes are possible in English, e.g.
lipstick (N+N); hardware (A+N); babysit (N+V);
bitter-sweet (A+A); loadfree (N+A)...
Morphological trees
• Compounding rules may differ in productivity (e.g. N+N
rule/pattern is the most productive; V+N rule/pattern is
unproductive and N+V rule/pattern is not productive either - *to
hair-wash)
• In a compound consisting of two elements, the lexeme stems are
combined (e.g. Lipstick vs. *lipsstick; child support vs. *Children
support; drawbridge vs.*drewbridge)
• The Compound: the first compound member modifies and
narrows the denotation of the second compound member, i.e.
The compound is a HYPONYM of its second member (the second
member is the HEAD and the first member is the DEPENDENT –
lipstick = a kind of stick, love letter = a kind of letter, etc.
Morphological trees
• The semantic relations between the HEAD and
the DEPENDENT may be quite diverse (e.g.
purpose = ‘’lipstick’’; location = ‘’garden
chair’’; agent = swansong; patient = ‘’Flower
seller’’). The knowledge of the world tells us
that ‘’street seller’’ is someone who sells
something on the street, although it is
possible to imagine someone selling entire
streets.
Morphological trees
• There are two main types of compounds:
a) HEAD-DEPENDENT or ENDOCENTRIC
b) EXOCENTRIC
• In English there are a few A+N Exocentric compounds (e.g. ‘’redhead’’
=someone who has red hair; highbrow, lazybones, etc.)
• There are also some V+N Exocentric compounds in English refering to people
rather than to instruments (e.g. ‘’cutthroat’’; ‘’pickpocket’’, ‘’kiljoy’’, etc.)
• There are also AFFIX COMPOUNDS consisting of more than one stem plus
an affix (e.g. ‘’green-eyed’’ = having green eyes; ‘’red-roofed’’ = having red
roof, etc.)
• There are also COORDINATIVE COMPOUNDS having more than one semantic
head, both members are on equal footing and can be paraphrased with
‘’and’’ (e.g. In Korean language)
Morphological trees
• There are also APPOSITIONAL COMPOUNDS in which both compound members
have the same reference (e.g. ‘’Poeta-pintor’’ in Spanish language, but there are
some in English as well, e.g. ‘’maidservant’’; Marxism-Leninism; and some
ADJECTIVE COMPOUNDS also belong to this group, e.g. ‘’bitter-sweet’’; ‘’deaf-
mute’’, etc.)
• When talking about hierarchical structure and head-dependent relations in
compounds, some close parallels can be seen between compounds and syntactic
phrases.
• Here are the examples of some minimal pairs:
COMPOUND: SYNTACTIC PHRASE:
Child care care for children, children’s care
Longhouse long house
Loadfree free of load
Waterproof proof against water
Morphological trees
• In syntactic phrases, the semantic criterion identifies the head as in compounds
(e.g. ‘’longhouse’’ is a kind of house; ‘’loadfree’’ means free in some specific
sense, etc.)
• There are some formal properties that a head must have:
a) The head is morphosynactic locus, i.e. It bears inflectional markers that belong
to the whole phrase
b) The head may govern the form of its dependents
c) The head may agree in person/number with its dependents
• If we take the compound ‘’lipsticks’’ , the morphosyntactic property that is
shared by the head and the compound is the PLURALITY.
• If we take the compound ‘’church mouse’’, the plural is ‘’church mice’’, because
the plural of the compound is the plural of the head (‘’mice’’).
• In English, there are some exocentric compounds have double plural form (e.g.
‘’sabertooth’’ – ‘’sabertooths’’, *’’saberteeth’’).
Morphological trees
• Sometimes it is possible that a compound consisting of more
than two elements has two hierarachical structures
simultaneously (e.g. ‘’nuclear power station’’ = ‘’nuclear power’’
and ‘’power station’’).
• When talking about hierarchical structure and head-dependent
relations in derived lexemes, we can also use tree diagrams to
represent relations between base lexemes and affixes.
• We can take the example of ‘’undoable’’ (adj.). It can have two
structure, because of two different meanings:
a) Undoable (un + doable) = ‘’which can’t be done’’
b) Undoable (undo + able) = ‘’which can be undone’’
Morphological trees
• The English suffix –able is mostly attached to verbs to form adjectives (e.g.
‘’readable’’), but it can also be attached to nouns to form adjectives (e.g.
‘’fashionable’’)
• Derivational affixes belong to word class (noun, adjective, verb), as well as
full lexemes and stems, and therefore they can be HEADS of the
corresponding derived lexemes. It means that the word-class of the
resulting derived lexeme is the same as the word-class of derivational affix
(e.g. ‘’readable’’ is an adjective, bacause the affix ‘’-able’’ is used for
forming adjectives.)
• However, not all derivational affixes are heads, because many of them do
not determine word-class and other properties of derived lexemes . That
particularly refers to prefixes and diminutive suffixes in European
languages. In English such prefix is ‘’co-’’ (e.g. ‘’Co-author’’; ‘’co-extensive’’;
co-exist’’).
PRACTICE
1. Provide a tree diagram for the following compounds:
Family planning adviser, undersea cable repair team,
fixed-line phone system, mad cow diesease hysteria,
World Trade Center rescue worker, credit card
agreement form, major league baseball game.
2. Provide a tree diagram for the following lexemes:
Nationality, relationship, bolder, gradually, kindness,
uncertainty.

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Morphological trees

• Morphologically complex words can be

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